It took David Yow all of about 10 seconds into the Jesus Lizard’s 80-minute concert Saturday at a sold-out Metro to launch himself into the crowd. For the untamed frontman, even now at 57, physical contact with the audience is a necessary component.
Eight years have elapsed since the Chicago-based noise-rock band — one of the finest live acts of the past 30 years — first reunited after dissolving in 1999. In the time since re-forming, the group’s members returned to their daily lives in cities scattered across the country. The Jesus Lizard last released new material in 1998. That makes this, the band’s latest gambit, a slight exercise in nostalgia — not to mention a potential threat to a rather unblemished onstage legacy.
With strands of long hair sticking up and smeared over his receding hairline, and open shirt exposing his chest, Yow resembled a haggard taxi driver. He didn’t appear as maniacal as he was during the band’s heyday, yet his appreciation for absurdity remained wholly intact. So did his willingness to accept the beatings that come with repetitive stage dives and antics that involved him bending his body into pretzel-like shapes.
At once a carnival barker, confrontational provocateur and tongue-in-cheek exhibitionist, the singer relished spontaneity and sly humor. He completed sets of pushups, tied himself up with the microphone cord, simulated hula dancing and mocked ostentatious rock-star conventions. Yow also molded his elastic voice at will. His semi-comprehensible wails, yelps, gasps and shouts exploded with a personality and intensity that matched the tone of his mates’ precision mayhem.
Bolstered by the seemingly inexhaustible Mac McNeilly on drums, the Jesus Lizard played with a snarling menace and granite-splitting grind that evoked the factory-dominated feel of the pre-gentrified Chicago in which the band cut its teeth. David Wm. Sims’ towing-cable-thick bass notes and Duane Denison’s sledgehammer guitar riffs understood the power of pacing and friction. Used to chaotic effect on crazed fare such as “Boilermaker,” they also employed slow-burn minimalism to expand the dynamics in songs such as “Seasick” and “Then Comes Dudley” while reaching into western, surf and jazz realms.
“Can you imagine what it’s like to be in such a great band as we are?” asked Yow, largely facetiously, during the first encore — and before performing “Blockbuster” almost entirely in the nude. The singer’s flippancy aside, the Jesus Lizard endures as a force. The only question is whether it tackles the next obvious challenge: staking its contemporary relevance with new music.
Bob Gendron is a freelance critic.
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